Ross McKitrick writing in the Financial Post about work performed by
himself and Stephen McIntyre had this to say about the tree ring data
used to allegedly support wild claims of a "hockey stick" in global
temperatures by liar Michael Mann.

"It turns out that many of the samples were taken from dead (partially
fossilized) trees and they have no particular trend. The sharp uptrend
in the late 20th century came from cores of 10 living trees alive as of
1990, and five living trees alive as of 1995. Based on scientific
standards, this is too small a sample on which to produce a
publication-grade proxy composite. The 18th and 19th century portion of
the sample, for instance, contains at least 30 trees per year. But that
portion doesn't show a warming spike. The only segment that does is the
late 20th century, where the sample size collapses. Once again a
dramatic hockey stick shape turns out to depend on the least reliable
portion of a dataset."

The worst part of this scam is that the global warming liars refused to
release their data for many years, and were not required to do so by
supposedly peer-reviewed journals. How disgusting. How can the
journals claim a legitimate standard of peer review if the peers cannot
see the actual data on which the assertions are based? Eventually, one
of the journals where these liars posted their absurd claims did require
publication of the data set. And, what do you know? It turns out that
the liars deliberately reduced their sample set to a small portion of
the data in order to obtain the hockey stick graph. In other words,
they did what we've known they were doing for yearsthey lied.

How do we know these were deliberate lies by the likes of Michael Mann?
McKitrick explains: "But an even more disquieting discovery soon
came to light. Steve searched a paleoclimate data archive to see if
there were other tree ring cores from at or near the Yamal site that
could have been used to increase the sample size. He quickly found a
large set of 34 up-to-date core samples, taken from living trees in
Yamal by none other than Schweingruber himself!Had these been added to
Briffa's small group the 20th century would simply be flat. It would
appear completely unexceptional compared to the rest of the millennium."

So what may we conclude about how this data manipulation fits into the
broader global warming controversy? Again, McKitrick explains.

"I have been probing the arguments for global warming for well over a
decade. In collaboration with a lot of excellent coauthors I have
consistently found that when the layers get peeled back, what lies at
the core is either flawed, misleading or simply non-existent. The
surface temperature data is a contaminated mess with a significant warm
bias, and as I have detailed elsewhere the IPCC fabricated evidence in
its 2007 report to cover up the problem. Climate models are in gross
disagreement with observations, and the discrepancy is growing with each
passing year. The often-hyped claim that the modern climate has departed
from natural variability depended on flawed statistical methods and
low-quality data. The IPCC review process, of which I was a member last
time, is nothing at all like what the public has been told: Conflicts of
interest are endemic, critical evidence is systematically ignored and
there are no effective checks and balances against bias or distortion."

These liars in the academic community such as Michael Mann are doing the
world a grave disservice. Obviously, they have benefited personally
from their fraud, by getting more funding for their area of science.
But they have harmed the people who depend on economic growth and
prosperity the mostthe very poorest people who need a growing economy
in order to survive. As a result of the work of these vicious liars,
millions of people have starved to death, new laws and new taxes
restricting the formation of new businesses, and new layers of
governmental regulatory overburden have been placed on the economy.

There ought to be severe penalties for such behavior. But there are
not. The global warming hysteria will continue, the liars will continue
to lie, and the truth will only slowly come to the surface. The
academic community will continue to promote the careers of these liars
because they did what the academics wanted: they expanded the amount of
money available in their field for more researchso they can publish
more lies.

People ought not to blindly trust the conclusions of scientists. You
should look at the data yourself. If the data isn't published, you
should call shenanigans on the whole thing.

And that goes triple for the machinations of politicians and bureau-rats
who use bad pseudo-science to get more money and more power.

Jim Davidson is an anti-war activist involved in the divestment project
detailed at divestfromdeath.wordpress.com. He is also an author and
entrepreneur. His latest book comes out this Autumn at 623 pages plus
notes. Two of his current projects involve financing films, one a
documentary about destination resorts in orbit. See www.11at40.com for
details. Visit cadre.ag for more ideas.